ZEEL’s Q4 consolidated revenues have grown by 37 per cent at Rs 5.26 billion. Advertisement revenue for Q4 stood at Rs 2.46 billion, an increase of 33.4 per cent as compared to the corresponding period last fiscal.

Commenting on the results, Subhash Chandra, Chairman said, “ZEEL has remained focused on its core strength of content offerings, which is aligned to its viewers’ preference and as a result viewership share for all its channels in respective genre have improved. Operating performance of the company has improved with a good finish to this fiscal year, and now the management team is confident of achieving higher growth in new fiscal 2009.”

Punit Goenka, Whole Time Director, commented, “Zee TV has emerged as a firm challenger to the No. 1 position in viewership share across all competing channels in GEC genre with its programmes in each slot has started to record higher GRP. Recently concluded ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa L’il Champs 2008’ was a great success. Newly launched ‘Rock N Roll Family’ was launched with a 4.2 TVR. Going forward, we are confident of improving our viewership share further with higher investment in programming content, particularly in the afternoon band and weekend programmes.”

Chandra said, “Zee News Ltd completed the fourth quarter of FY08 with extraordinary strong operating profit of Rs 246 million as against a loss of Rs 16 million in the corresponding quarter last fiscal. This growth has been led by a significant increase in advertisement revenues, which have grown 84 per cent. I am glad to mention that the flagship Zee News channel is constantly gaining new grounds by acquiring competitor’s share of the market without losing focus from creating serious and responsible news. At the same time, increasing viewer acceptance of our content has led the other existing as well as new businesses to redefine success.”

“Our new regional channels, Zee Telugu and Zee Kannada, are steadily gaining ground against many established players. It won’t be long before both these channels break even and we start monetising the market share captured by them. We will be launching Zee Tamil by the end of July 2008. There is no doubt that regional language markets are more cluttered than the Hindi market, but Zee Network cannot afford not to be in these languages,” Chandra further said.

Laxmi Narain Goel, Managing Director, Zee News Ltd, said, “This has been an eventful quarter for us with each one of the channels under Zee News Ltd either increasing or holding on to their channel share compared to the previous quarter. Both existing as well as new businesses achieved excellent top line growth of 52.8 per cent and 153.4 per cent, respectively, as compared to the corresponding quarter last fiscal. It is our constant endeavour to deliver long term shareholder value as well as create value for our advertising partners by focusing on consumer activity and quality of content. Further, through agile strategies and an effective cost control platform we are committed to scale much higher than industry benchmarks.”

Elaborating on the company’s performance, Barun Das, CEO, said, “Q4 saw Zee News close the gap with its next biggest competitor despite the overcrowded market. To further propel our growing popularity in the Hindi news genre, we have planned a high profile relaunch of Zee News.”